Stand-up comedy generally fills me with dread. Not the prospect of me doing it – heaven forbid! – but the fear that the comedian will fluff their lines, or worse, be met with a deadly silence. So, when I saw Lolly Adefope at a charity stand-up night last year, and laughed out loud from start to finish, it was solid confirmation that Adefope’s just as funny as critics, and fans alike, assert.

This August, the multi-award-winning character comedian returns to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Lolly 3. 2018 marks Adefope’s eighth year at the festival where she has previously performed, worked and spectated. After skipping the festival in 2017 (though she couldn’t really keep away and visited for the closing 10 days), her brand new show Lolly 3 is “basically like a documentary of who Lolly Adefope is by meeting the people who know her best,” she explains over the phone. “Talking to her relatives, and people that have worked with her – it's all characters that I play.”

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Character comedy is at the core of Lolly’s thigh-slapping, brilliantly perceptive performance, which covers topics such as racism and political-(in)correctness, with her sharp wit and killer accents. “The voices tend to be accents that I can do that I will extend and make them more cartoonish,” Adefope explains. “And then traits I've seen either on Twitter, or with friends of a friend or people I know. It’s annoying opinions that people might hold or annoying gestures that people might do – if I'm talking about something to do with race or diversity – I’ll basically blend all of those things to make a character. It’ll never be an impression of one person. It'll always be a group of different things coming together.”

Matt Crockett

Does the 27-year-old get frustrated with constantly being asked about race or being defined by her ethnicity? “It’s annoying because you want those conversations to happen as there are people who would never expose themselves to those things unless you speak up about them, but at the same time, you want to focus on your own thing and be seen as a person. So with my third show, I came to Edinburgh just looking to do a character comedy show where I could be silly, and I could do the kind of thing that I’d seen my heroes doing. It is annoying that some people only see black women as role models to other black women, rather than as role models to lots of different people. On a similar note, when Doctor Who came out, lots of people were like ‘oh, young men have lost a role model’ but there's no reason why a woman can't be a role model for a boy. It’s a constant frustration, I guess.”

Growing up watching Amanda Bynes, Catherine Tate and Olivia Coleman on TV, Adefope’s interest in comedy was certainly piqued as a young girl. “I watched a lot of comedy when I was younger. I don't think that not seeing black women in comedy held me back, but I think subconsciously I never really thought that it was a career that I would definitely go into. It was always my dream career, but it was never something that I assumed would be there for me. Going to Edinburgh when I was at university and seeing people who were my age just getting up and doing what they wanted to do, was quite a clincher for me.”

Fast forward to 2018 and Adefope is one of Britian’s most promising comedic talents but she’s also got her sights set on Hollywood and the big screen. This summer, Lolly stars in upcoming film The Spy Who Dumped Me alongside Mila Kunis and Gillian Anderson, as well as US comedy series Miracle Workers alongside Steve Buscemi and Daniel Radcliffe. With such major roles under her belt, get your tickets to Lolly 3 at the Fringe while you still can, before Adefope outgrows her favourite stomping ground. As she says so fondly herself: “[Edinburgh Fringe Festival] just feels like a real hub of excitement – a real, vibrant place for theatre and comedy. I think for the UK, it's the one place to be.”